GQ MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



great fabric of our civilization ; that I consider their occupation 

 the most noble of all occupations, and themselves the' most 

 intelligent and the most honorable of all men. If I were not 

 a farmer myself and did not live behind the scenes ; if I did 

 not know the farmer class as well as a boy knows his own 

 brother, then I might fall in with this threadbare palaver, and 

 seek favor through a flattery that would fall far short of 

 deceiving its hearers. 



Farming is noble when it is nobly done, — when it is meanly 

 done, it is mean. Whether a farmer is intelligent and honor- 

 able depends entirely on himself, not at all on his occupation. 

 In other words, a farmer is not " a gentleman by right of his 

 profession." I have the same profound respect for a good, 

 honest, manly, straight-forward, kind-hearted, clear-headed 

 farmer, that I have for a good, honest, manly, straight-forward, 

 kind-hearted, clear-headed shoemaker, or lawyer, or clergyman. 

 I recognize in each of them the qualities on which the advance- 

 ment of the world is to depend, and toward which it is the 

 duty of us all to bend our natures, — as much as our natures 

 will allow. On the other hand, when I see a stingy, close-fisted, 

 narrow-minded, pig-headed man, who is jealous and suspicious 

 of all improvement, the fact that he is a farmer does not make 

 him any more lovely in my eyes, than if he were a mechanic, 

 nor can it shield him from the contempt that all meanness 

 deserves, among whatever class it may appear. 



It is important that all men — farmers as well as others — 

 should have a fixed and tangible aim, something to work for ; 

 but something which, when they shall have attained it, will be 

 worth the work it has cost. 



Now, in the case of the farmer, what shall this aim be ? 

 Mere worldly prosperity, the ownership of broad acres and 

 fat herds, the piling up of stocks and bonds, and the spread- 

 ing of one's parchment over all the farms of a neighborhood 1 

 All these are, in and of themselves, of no avail to make a man 

 happy or to make him respectable. When they become the 

 main object of life, they are actual clogs to their possessor. 

 At the same time, money, that root of all evil, may be made, 

 when rightly managed, a fruitful soil from which vast good may 

 grow ; and I hold to the doctrine that in the development of 

 the world, money is the best aid to advancement. The work by 



